When STARS come down to Malls!

Picture this –

You at a mall…..people gathering obnoxiously and you just wondering- what in the world has gone wrong with the entire world as they are all moving in one direction dismissing the fact that they are hurting the passer-by's!

Alas! This is Hrithik Roshan & Barbara in the mall – here for promoting the movie ‘Kites’. And yeah it was all over the papers in New Delhi that the crowd gathered to have a glimpse of Barbara banged into a showroom display window & broke the glass. Police and Security alerted…crowd called off!

Many more similar incidents have had happened. The ones those are successful are either very well managed or they are just kept away from the pre-event media hype.

Malls & Movies….

Going rounds of the malls for my various projects…..I have been really wondering one thing…. Can we really imagine a ‘Movie Release’ without a mall promotion? I am sure it’s a big ‘No’ to this. Be it any movie…a much talked about – Dabangg or a less talked about 95 minutes movie ’Dhobi Ghaat’; each of them have to get to a mall to make themselves hyped, happening & connect live.

You name any…and it there! A star is visiting a mall in east of the city the competitive release scheduled for the same day will promote itself in a mall in the west of the city. One thing which would be common is the media hype. Be it radio or the local papers which talk about – ‘Today in Town’ columns. Not to forget the full page to flap advertisements by the Multiplexes! It’s all about adding to the fun quotient. And the youth follows!

Recently, I had to do a brief touch-up of the mall lobby for an upcoming release…I appreciate that the property owners went for that extra mile and wanted to make it a special treat for the cinemagoers! But while doing so…the security & events team had different nodes and we were trying to play the music in sync.  Well on one end, aesthetically my client was right but I was more in agreement to the security as we need to take care of the concerns relating to visitors and customer traffic, so to say.  Anyways, we somehow managed the show and movie is doing good in numbers!

Now the question is – How many movies actually fair well due to such promotions?

Farah Khan was seen almost everywhere with Ms.Kaif for Tees Maar Khan

Abhishek holds a record for visiting maximum cities in a day for Delhi 6. How many records does the movie have in its kitty?

Does it actually help the movie producers to bring these stars to the malls? Won’t it be a good idea to hold PC (Press Conferences) and air them on the idiot box popularly known as TV. I think the star presence in Daily Soaps  and reality Tv are doing good as anyways each of that visit is worth a BIG NEWS for the national news channels…

What do you say? Does it help? Have you been to a mall to witness a star visit?